The company was founded in 1990 bringing to life João Fiadeiro’s choreographic work. Since it’s early days, it paid special attention to the establishment of a demanding and constructive dialogue between the artistic community, the public and cultural agents through experimental projects, co-productions, residencies, festivals, workshops and publications. RE.AL was one of the structures that took part in the 90’s Nova Dança Portuguesa movement. Within this context João Fiadeiro makes a statement, presenting his first pieces throughout Europe but mainly in Germany and France. Since 1997 João Fiadeiro is often invited to direct research workshops in several countries, namely France, Austria, Swiss, Czech Republic and Denmark. Within Lugar Comum, in 1999, RE.AL organized the first international workshop on the concept of ‘Real Time Composition’.

This event not only created the foundations and research contents that are still being practiced at Re.Al butalso formed a collective comprised by national and international artists, performers and collaborators involved, since then, in RE.AL’s activities. From that intensive research a new project was born: ‘Existência’; between 2002 and 2005 it was the privileged space for exploring the method of Real Time Composition. Since then, some collaborations, namely with choreographers like Tiago Guedes and Cláudia Dias and the plastic artist Gustavo Sumpta, have emerged. They are now Re.Al’s associated artists and Re.Al contributes to their productions providing financial and logistic help, and also defining creation and diffusion strategies.

The arrival of these artists marks the beginning of a truly new era at Re.Al. The definition of a dance company centered on a single author gave rise to a structure where several artists developed their own projects under the aegis of a common label. In that way, between 2005 and 2009, we assumed ourselves as a bicephalous organization. One the one hand RE.AL was focused on its new productions and on the circulation of repertoires of it’s associated choreographers and on the other hand it began to organize and produce events related to the residencies. Between 2009 and 2014 the work main focus was research, theoretical production and transmission of the Real Time Composition method. At the same time, the AND_Lab, a center for research and scientific creativity, was founded in partnership with the Brazilian anthropologist Fernanda Eugénio. Since 2015, RE.AL returns to its forehand condition: an organism devoted to artistic creation, autonomous from Atelier RE.AL and able to focus all its attention on João Fiadeiro’s choreographies and on Real Time Composition study and documental archive.